Technical Field
Embodiments disclosed herein relate to capturing network data. In particular, embodiments disclosed herein relate to selecting data to be captured using an application delivery controller.
Brief Description of Related Art
Network data can be captured for a variety of purposes, such as security, operations analysis, data collection and quality of service assurance. Data is captured by providing network using an active or passive device, such as a tap, probe, or filter or copper splitter, that provides a copy of all network traffic to one or more capture servers, or switch port analyzer (SPAN) ports that provide a copy of network traffic, with limited filtering capabilities, to one or more capture servers. Filtering by SPAN ports is limited, because filtering can only be performed on data that corresponds to lower levels of a network model. Such lower levels include, for example, layers 1-3 and parts of layer 4 of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model, or layers 1 and 2 and parts of layer 3 of the transfer control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) model. The limited ability to filter which data is to be captured from the network traffic and sent to the capture servers requires a large number of capture servers to store and process a large quantity of captured network data.